Recipe: Homemade Ketchup {Whole30}

by Cate on February 12, 2018

Ketchup that tastes the way it should … like tomatoes! Read on for a super simple recipe that will hook you from the very first taste.

If you’ve ever done a round or 5 of Whole30, you know that you become a voracious label reader. After the first week or so, it no longer feels like a chore. It starts to feel like empowerment. They put WHAT in my ketchup?! They use WHAT to make my bacon?!

And the more you learn, the more you want to take control of what you put in your body, and make better decisions for you and your family.

I am seriously a condiment queen. I really don’t think there’s any I don’t like, and whether it’s being slathered on a burger or as a dipping sauce for my roasted potatoes, I’m all about it. But … when you’re doing Whole30, you quickly learn that you can’t have some of your usual suspects when it comes to condiments.

Mostly because of the added sugar, and all the unpronounceable garbage they put into it.

In previous rounds of Whole30, I started making my own mayonnaise (and have ever since, whether I’m on Whole30 or not), and I discovered the most delicious buffalo aioli ever. I also started making my own ketchup, although it took getting to my third round of Whole30 to actually blog about it.

#reallifeproblems

If you read the labels of most ketchup bottles, you will find sugar listed in some form or fashion. Whether it’s listed as straight up sugar or high fructose corn syrup, or more subtly mentioned as a form of sucralose, it’s most definitely there, and usually along with several other ingredients that are not Whole30-compliant.

What to do?

That’s when you start making it yourself.

Like, seriously, if you open up my refrigerator you’ll routinely see an assortment of home bottled goodies, everything from mayo and ranch to ketchup and avocado dressings.

#CondimentQueen

When you take your first taste of homemade ketchup, the first thing you’ll notice is that it tastes suspiciously like tomatoes. IMAGINE THAT. Tomatoes is totally what ketchup is SUPPOSED to taste like! And if you do a side-by-side taste test, and taste an off-the-shelf version compared to your homemade batch, you’ll all the sudden see how sweet the store-bought version tastes.

Blech.

As long as you have a can of tomato paste in your pantry, you likely have the rest of the basic ingredients you need to whip up a batch of homemade ketchup. It takes literally just a few minutes to whir all the ingredients together in your little food processor (I’m partial to this one and use it ALL.THE.TIME), and you’ll have a nice little quantity to last you for several weeks.

Whether you’re on Whole30 or not, I encourage you to give the homemade version a try. I made some for a fellow Whole30 friend a few weeks ago. She doesn’t like ketchup, but LOVES the homemade version.